I'm getting disappointed with my intelligence

[pelecanus87]

When I was younger, there were many signs that I was going to be bright.

I graduated college with good grades and didn't even have to try that hard.

I was relatively better informed and engaged with politics and philosophy compared to most people my age when I was 18-19 or so.

Yet it seems that now, as a 30 year old man, I increasingly find that there are many things that others understand that I either don't know about or struggle to grasp. It's as though everyone else made up ground and I stayed the same. Not sure what can really be done or said about this, but has anyone else experienced this?

 

[Gary DuBois]

When I was younger, there were many signs that I was going to be bright.

I graduated college with good grades and didn't even have to try that hard.

I was relatively better informed and engaged with politics and philosophy compared to most people my age when I was 18-19 or so.

Yet it seems that now, as a 30 year old man, I increasingly find that there are many things that others understand that I either don't know about or struggle to grasp. It's as though everyone else made up ground and I stayed the same. Not sure what can really be done or said about this, but has anyone else experienced this?

I feel the same way regarding it's as though everyone else made up ground and i stayed the same.

 

[Bolletje]

Reminds me of this comic which I'm unable to embed for some reason. But I can relate. I haven't really found an answer, other than that due to my intelligence I've been mingling with increasingly intelligent people, first in high school, then out of high school into med school. I started off with a very heterogenous population concerning intelligence, but as selection criteria get more stringent it becomes increasingly unlikely to be in the top of the pack.

Other than that, life just gets harder as you're older. It was easy to skate through high school without doing anything, because my biggest worries at that point were not being popular and my mom not buying me a skateboard.

As you grow up you get so many more things to worry about, that divert your attention. Making ends meet. Getting a degree. Finding a job. Having a social life. Getting insurance. Finding a life partner. Getting married? Having kids or waiting? Traveling the world or settling down? Parents getting older, family members getting sick. You catch my drift. Responsibilities can be overwhelming. Adulthood can be exhausting.

Recent research has shown that financial trouble alone can cut your IQ by a whopping 15-20 points. The same goes for anxiety and depression, which decreases your IQ even more. Both by constantly draining your mental resources. Luckily, the IQ drain is reversible, provided your situation changes.

 

[pelecanus87]

Reminds me of this comic which I'm unable to embed for some reason. But I can relate. I haven't really found an answer, other than that due to my intelligence I've been mingling with increasingly intelligent people, first in high school, then out of high school into med school. I started off with a very heterogenous population concerning intelligence, but as selection criteria get more stringent it becomes increasingly unlikely to be in the top of the pack.

Other than that, life just gets harder as you're older. It was easy to skate through high school without doing anything, because my biggest worries at that point were not being popular and my mom not buying me a skateboard.

As you grow up you get so many more things to worry about, that divert your attention. Making ends meet. Getting a degree. Finding a job. Having a social life. Getting insurance. Finding a life partner. Getting married? Having kids or waiting? Traveling the world or settling down? Parents getting older, family members getting sick. You catch my drift. Responsibilities can be overwhelming. Adulthood can be exhausting.

Recent research has shown that financial trouble alone can cut your IQ by a whopping 15-20 points. The same goes for anxiety and depression, which decreases your IQ even more. Both by constantly draining your mental resources. Luckily, the IQ drain is reversible, provided your situation changes.

I've never heard of IQ being that malleable this late in life. Can you provide a source or an idea of where you heard this? Thanks for the reply.

 

[Bolletje]

I've never heard of IQ being that malleable this late in life. Can you provide a source or an idea of where you heard this? Thanks for the reply.

It's not necessarily malleable, but temporarily decreased by stress. I have this article on how poverty and related stress can decrease your cognitive function. I'm looking for a reputable source about the link between depression and cognitive functioning as related to IQ. I know IQ-tests are unreliable when the subject is depressed, because executive IQ is significantly reduced. The result of an IQ-test in a depressed individual is of little to no value for that reason.
I'll post a source when I find it.

 

[Bolletje]

Found this article on estimates of intelligence by IQ testing in adults with depression versus healthy controls. It might be a little old, and sadly the full article isn't available here, but I've been told the same during my psych internships.

 

[Suzanne]

Actually I am the opposite! The older I get, the more knowledgable I become and only a few people can I have such intense conversations with.

 

[nowwhat]

I believe the thread is about intelligence, not accumulated knowledge. Different things.

 

[Alcyon]

@pelecanus87 , I have an experience much like yours: great promise, poor performance. I have become convinced that the notion that there is a single "intelligence" is quite likely wrong. Or at least needs a lot of explanation and qualification.

I have watched as the most unlikely people have succeeded, not because they were formally intelligent, but because they were sly, clever, and determined. Some of the stupidest people I have met (I have three in mind as I write this), and I mean stupid in that they knew little and couldn't be taught anything, had a peculiar knack for managing their money. So, at least in a material way, their lives were secure.

I think that the ability to coast through school, as you and I did, is a recipe for disaster. It implanted the notion in my head that life was like that; it was going to be easy, the apples were going to just fall off the tree and into my basket. Getting older is finding that the low-hanging fruit is all gone, now comes the daily grind. Intelligence, whatever that is, is helpful, but what is really required is motivation and dogged persistence.

I don't have any secrets about how to acquire or develop motivation and persistence; I do find bills piling up help in that regard!

 

[midlife aspie]

I don't worry about it. I'm a 'rock' and always was. As such, I fail to see wisdom in pursuing and investing too much in transient things. Here today, but may be gone tomorrow. You are you, I am me, and they are they. Yesterday was, today is, and tomorrow might be. Live it up. We're all likely to end up back at 'scratch' in the end.

 

[OkRad]

I came to a conclusion . I am poor and I did not finished university and I was beat up and domestic violence. I have little social support and health problems. And yet, I still like life most of the time.

I resolved never to let the world take the intelligence I was born with. So I am down a few IQ points from the poverty and abuse and the accident. All day, I make sure to read things like Aristotle and Seneca and Thucydides and Shakespeare because I can't work, I am not in realtionship I am what people would say is a "loser" but I am not a loser.

It is not just acquiring knowledge, but it the act of stimulating intelligence.

It dawned on me how much resiliency people here show, like just the most amazing set of skills I have ever seen. I probably do not have a long life ahead of me, and it may be alone and poor and all that.......but it's not going to be a stupid one.

And if I end up losing it all in a stroke, well, I sure ask heck enjoyed getting it in there. Don't lose hope about your intelligence. You will always find a way to be who you are and grab it forever. Neurodiverse people are so good at that and that is one reason I like this forum!

 

[Adora]

I have sensitivity about my level of IQ,I left high school halfway through year 8 due extreme bullying that made it impossible for me to continue,even now I still get stressed out when I hear about anything to do with school,but though I did struggle in some areas in school I was told that I was smart but it's something I have issues with believing,years ago when I was seeing someone who was also seeing someone else without me knowing would tell the lady he was seeing that I was "dumb" because i didn't catch on he was cheating on me at the time but I found out later and also what he said about me which hurt but even now I struggle with believing anyone saying that I'm smart because I have many others tell me otherwise.

 

[8398]

I've only been suspecting I have Asperger's, but I never did good in school, never felt like I was above average in intelligence. I've gone through lots of stess, depression, anxiety, possibly caused by not knowing this whole time. I didn't know it could lower my intelligence. But at the same time I don't mind being a little dimwitted. On my sharpest days I contemplate the meaning of life, and that's no fun. I do want to be healthy though.